=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2413/paper03
|storemode=property
|title=
AI Elegance and Ethics - Just Married?
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2413/paper03.pdf
|volume=Vol-2413
|authors=Ludmil Duridanov,Simeon Simoff
}}
==
AI Elegance and Ethics - Just Married?
==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2413/paper03.pdf
AI Elegance and Ethics – Just Married?
Ludmil Duridanov 1[0000-0001-8269-5077] and Simeon Simoff 2[0000-0001-9895-4109]
1
New Bulgarian University , 21 M ontevideo St, 1618 Sofia, Bulgaria (EU)
2
Western Sydney University , Locked Bag 1797, Penrith NSW 2751, Australia
1
duridanov@gmail.com, 2 s.simoff@westernsydney.edu.au
Abstract. The following paper is dedicated to the 21st century’s “recent mar-
riage” between the aesthetics of beauty and elegance on the one hand, and the
ethics of choice on the other, involved in the “humanizing mission” of AI digital
assistance. In the context of the 4.0 Social Revolution it will be shown how mod-
ern aesthetic concepts of AI design can go hand in hand with the ethics of choice,
because of their inherent connection, backtracked in earlier moments of Euro-
pean history, and expanded around the French Revolution in Schiller’s 27 letters
On Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) as well as earlier in Leibniz holistic aes-
thetics. Relevant arguments will be discussed here to disclose the “secrets” of
how the inherent connection is to be carried out within the metaphysical back-
ground of faith, even if modern 20th century attitude has seemingly dismissed its
“philosophical burden” during the late 1970-ies. In 2011 a “New Aesthetics” was
introduced without the burden of metaphysics, aiming to create a new “lens” for
the perception of elegance, simplicity and clarity by young “digitally naïve”
Avantgarde artists. However, elegance and beauty have previously been claimed
by algorithmic solutions, starting with Leibniz and Condorcet, which gave birth
to the 20th century computational aesthetics. The social life of AI algorithms –
we cannot perceive them as humans – seems mostly intended to optimize corpo-
rate solutions. But the 21st century artists are about to take their chances on cre-
ating something new that makes us feel artificial intelligence as an integral part
of a beautiful mind. AI algorithms can offer smart solutions, but the wisdom of
choice has to remain a human call.
Keywords: Aesthetics of Design, Beauty, Elegance, New Aesthetics, Ethics of
Choice, Artificial Intelligence, Plato, Leibniz, Schiller, Hegel, Heidegger, Face-
book, Digital Divide, Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives, Grown-up Digital,
Generation Like
1 Introduction
The expanding internet technologies have immersed human existence over the last dec-
ades to a point that we feel tempted to give more and more areas where assisting algo-
rithms could be involved by offering us to make our “free choice” between a variety of
smart solutions. The crucial question how far we go to trust their “tender suggestions”
perceiving them as simple and elegant for a reason.
Proceedings of the XXII International Conference “Enterprise Engineering and Knowledge
M anagement” April 25-26, 2019, M oscow, Russia
2
If we have to handle the world of digital assistance, a multigenerational context has
to be made relevant with a series of metaphors , because genuine metaphoric always
recurs within the holistic approach of metaphysics. [1, p. 89] Let’s figure out a “pendu-
lum” swinging between data immersed “non-programmers” and “programmers”,
YouTubers and gamers on the one hand, and online tourists participating in a variety
of social networking activities and in-and-out evasive users on the other. A detailed
analysis of the responsively swinging pendulum is out of our scope at the moment, be-
cause we will handle it in a separate publication (coming next). It requires a “micro -
scopic analysis” where emotionally driven addiction to online spaces and escapism are
often the two sides of the same coin, considered as a whole. Herein a ‘great divide’ is
to be highlighted between the inconsistent multiplicity of a networked clientele, the
fluctuations of online user abstinence, the “frozen cubes” of online user aversion and
passionate hater’s behavior. [2]
Keeping in mind the background multiplicity “digitally grown-up” users (the so-
called Digital Natives) perceive beauty and elegance differently from the so-called Dig-
ital Immigrants [3] by designing their own aesthetic environment, often in an easy and
light way, without the philosophical burden of a distinguished 18th – 20th century met-
aphysical background of religion and ethics.
The main accent of our short discussion today is on the discernment of a seemingly
“difficult marriage” between AI perceived as fancy, elegant and cool, and a nuanced
ethics of free choice varying on demand, within the “dismissed background” of meta-
physics of faith.
2 A 21st Century Point of View with the Lens of Classics
In 2011 James Bridle announced a New Aesthetics of cool which aims to create a Com-
putational Avantgarde in Art and Design. The young Generation Like claims here the
perception of “unseen elegance”, simplicity and clarity of shape and colors shared
mostly on Tumblr and Pinterest. Their “digitally naïve” aesthetics meets here an “algo-
rithmically born” ethics and touches upon 21st century “new anxieties” [4] [5] [6, pp.
63-67, 86-87, 238]. The trend has been followed by media-fatigued classy young people
wishing to have a chance to relax and literally “just be”. Uniquely beautiful and de-
tached-looking youngsters master convincingly a “lens”, manifesting themselves with
captions like “Be hot! Be cool! Just be!” Media Sociologist Douglas Rushkoff calls
them “merchants of cool”. [7] The immediate perception goes hand in hand with the
immediate action of art and sharing which could be referred here to as “dubstep design”
to use a metaphor. [8, p.83]
It is important to conceive religion and ritual not as a traditional theology of God,
but merely as an individually driven quest for a free choice. A “personalized attitude”
of a homo singularis who is “free to be on his own” as defined since Hegel (“Freiheit
bei sich selbst zu sein” [9, p. 5, 277]) and to act differently in every situation, i.e. to
3
believe or remain skeptical from case to case [10, p.124-125, 128-129] [11, p.130-133].
The 20th century attitude has been defined by the sociologist Peter Berger [12] as acting
upon a heretical imperative where everyone can make his own “religious choices”. This
attitude has been increasingly developed after 15th – 16th century Reformation of Lu-
ther, Calvin and Zwingli within a “religiously neutral” state, thus being primarily initi-
ated in 13th century China. The 21st century experience is increasingly processed by the
“granular dissolution” of human life in small features computed every moment by AI
“invisible algorithms”. Information granularity is to be considered as a design asset that
assists existing modeling patterns and practices with new conceptual and algorithmic
features. It remains open if that makes the resulting models more reflective concerning
the increasing complexity of real-world phenomena. [13] These processes have been
tagged with the remarkable computing metaphor of granular society, introduced by
sociologist Christoph Kucklick. It became a symbolically considered as an umbrella
term for the 21st century “digital modeling” of societal interaction processes [14].
The “small features” are the data fundus of a new digital ethics of choice which under-
pins the new digital aesthetics. The online filter bubble [15] tailors what we see and
experience immediately as a data driven onscreen aesthetics. Algorithmic gatekeepers
based on Google search criteria take decisions for us what is to be visually accessible
and how it is to be queued, which initiates a new data ethics. A new elegant transpar-
ency via data scaling of a human being or a product comes up. However, it becomes
difficult to backtrack the way in which the “invisible algorithms” bring out their smart
solutions, which makes the feeling of uncanny valley stronger and stronger. [16] During
the Industrial Age only our friends and family would have access to life data we shared
with them. The uncanny moment is not only the globally distributed risk to have your
home “trespassed” by someone unknown without noticing it. That could happen in the
19th century as well, if not in the same “invisible way”. Being vulnerable as an accu-
rately explored “content object” we would never know how and when we are analyzed
“below the surface” which causes an uncanny feeling. It makes people feel like a target
to be taken down by a shotgun, because the digital assistant is emotionally inaccessible
to us as a friend. “Don’t be evil” is the assigned friendly role it plays. This remains just
the visible part of an “iceberg”, a “frozen ethics” where data criteria make us believe it
is about Buddhist ethics of choice. Historically viewed, Christian and Buddhist faith
have developed the Medieval patterns of belief for “mass consumption” of everyday
users. A short list of eminent figures, the so-called viri illustri, developed a variety of
“invisible ways” to solve contradictory criteria in the “cloud of mystics” accessible only
to a certain elite. This model of thinking has been “granularly dissolved” to a minimu m
of meaningful criteria and prepared for the “mass consumption” society, being intensi-
fied during the Industrial Age. We have to jump back in time to find out how a signifi-
cant minimum of relevant criteria can also comply with 21st century individual choices ,
considering the metaphysics of faith and wisdom as integral part of the aesthetics of joy
and pleasure. In a late 17th century letter, addressed to the Duke of Hanover, Ernst
August, Leibniz had articulated essential touchstones relevant to a 21st century context.
He showed how joy mirrors the “feeling of perfection” and retrieves the “highest degree
of reality” at the same time, when speaking of justice as charity (= general benevolence)
4
of the wise man. Here wisdom is to be considered as a “science of felicity” (felicity
being confined as a lasting joy): „La justice est la charité du sage ou une charité
conforme à la sagesse. La charité n’est autre chose que la bienveillance générale. La
Sagesse c’est la science de la felicité. La felicité est l’état de joie durable. La joie c’est
un sentiment de perfection.“ [17, p.877] Leibniz can be considered as the initiator of
computational aesthetics to be later developed in a 20th century context. Within his
holistic vision of beauty as perfection, he saw also the perspective of algorithmic crite-
ria of elegance with the simplicity and clarity of computational choices [18] [19] [20,
p. 5-6, 11, 13, 31-33].
3 21st Century Challenges with the Lens of Digital
Consumerism
The 21st century democratically-driven Western society model is about to face several
crucial challenges:
1. The first one is to consider the “invisibly optimized” AI distributed environ-
ments of global players, such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, HP
and other, because these environments design and maintain the communica-
tion infrastructure of over 50% of 7,5 billion people. To what extent is aes-
thetics of design relevant here to the ethics of decision, since AI chatbots can
“recognize” our demand – from project participation to “mass consumption”?
2. The second one is to what extent individuals are “tuned” to interact with AI
digital assistants who are “happy” to help us with “granularly dissolved” data
on smartphones, iPads and tablets . How would AI assistants be programed so
that the granularly delivered information comply within an ethics of choice
[21]? How would the ethics of choice convene to handle patients with hard
diseases in a “critical situation”? How would medical specialists “adjust” their
choices to face the knowledge in granularly dissolved “small criteria” where
the usual way to handle a disease, e.g. diabetes or heart attack in various cases,
is not going to be the same? How will health insurances and patients respond
when having granular data about life expectancy of each patient? In cases
when patients know accurately they will not live long, how will they respond
to the ethics of free choice? Will they join the solidarity insurance or another
“customized one”? The ethics of choice is raised here to another level. How
do we handle the processed granularity of Big Data when having embraced
the “4K resolution” scaling options, keeping in mind that over 2/3 of Big Data
have been processed during the last years ? And we “feel motivated” to further
the exponential growth of Big Data as a luxury option of home environment.
5
Since the Enlightenment people have lived with the fundamental illusion that they
“create” their own world, a thesis well underpinned by philosophers, sociologists, psy-
chologists, anthropologists and later on by scientists, scholars and research fellows . It
can be best illustrated with the eminent words of the existential philosopher, Martin
Heidegger, one of the last thinkers to have “processed” historically the metaphysical
background: “The man as a world maker” (weltbildend, [22, p. 273]). Then, comes up
the second illusion as a chain reaction, people have a free choice to take a decision and
determine how they live in a world being “primed” through the centuries by mainstream
religious perspectives, such as Jewish-Christian, Islamic and Buddhist ones. In a world,
regulated by AI social algorithms and digital assistants an uncanny valley is the natural
emotionally driven response to the disrupted illusion of human environment “created”
by man as a subject taking one’s own choices.
We mentioned previously the “great divide” of the audience between “grown-up
digital”, “digitally naïve migrants” and “digital immigrants” (which could be “granu-
larly dissolved” in smaller categories). The “digitally naïve” young people are the de-
signers of a 21st century world where their first home is a “digitally born” one. It re-
verses the usual perspective of “digital immigrants” who get in and out of online spaces
as a “second life ambience”, but do not live in [3] [23]. If we philosophically “dissolve”
the context of the “young audience” then we will disclose a “historical secret” with a
Socratic back-to-the-future metaphysical view that “young” is intrinsically bound to
“beautiful”. A clear cut Platonic reference [24, p.416] brings out a “4K resolution” of
the integral relation of “being noble” within a human choice of action and the AI aes-
thetics of beauty: “There is nothing written by Plato and there will not be anything.
Everything which bears his name is from the time of Socrates who has been young and
beautiful”, i.e. young and beautiful means here to “give birth” to a new environment, in
the personal faith to create something good, not to leave “written traces” which can be
falsely interpreted. Re-designing digitally 21st century societal interaction modalities –
where human intellect, for the first time in history, is challenged with smarter and faster
developing AI assistants – we have to make up our mind with a moral choice how to
configure our “AI children”. How should they “learn” from our experience and how
should they take ethical decisions to apply the concluded context which becomes a real
issue [14, p.96] [21].
4 Тhe Holistic Inevitability of Choice
Should we keep on “optimizing” unified communications for a distribute environment
on a global scale? Or should we “implant” human emotions, opening the door to organ-
ically growing AI “hybrid intelligence” that can love and enrich its own imagination
on the go? And how is the “emotional resistance” to be “granularly dissolved” in small
criteria? Finding an AI computing solution is crucial, which is pointed in the inscription
on the Platonic Academia, literally restricting the entrance to users who cannot think
with a mathematical precision (as evidenced by 6th century philosopher, Elias [in Cat.
6
118,18]: οὐδεὶς ἀγεωμέτρητος εἰσίτω) [25]. Leibniz goes a step further in the late 17th
century and delivers a “second key” why metaphysics cannot be “granularly dissolved”
without mathematics. He has disclosed the “secret” why a holistic approach on the fun-
damentals of our world is an unsatisfactory one without the exactitude of mathematical
thinking as a tool. (Bordas-Demoulin’s words, quoted by Heidegger [22, p.24], have
apparently been assigned to Leibniz with a slightly altered wording: “Sans les mathé-
matiques on ne pénètre point au fond de la métaphysique”, while Leibniz writes expli-
citly in another letter /1694/: “Ma métaphysique est toute mathématique pour ainsi dire,
ou la pourrait devenir”) [26, p.2-3]. Here is the appropriate moment to say why meta-
physics and religion are relevant as a background to our approach. Metaphysics has
granularly processed relevant points of faith and ritual through the centuries which
have been originally the domain of mainstream Jewish-Christian, Islamic and Buddhist
faith. That way it has fostered the 20th century “heretical imperative”, i.e. the ethics of
a “neutral choice”. Metaphysics has also processed and maintained the permanent quest
for defining the world we live in by meaningful categories within a holistic approach,
“embracing the whole” and getting the “underlying fundamentals”, as eminently an-
nounced by various philosophers, where Martin Heidegger has a distinct position. He
is the last 20th century thinker to have historically “processed” great philosophical
thinking from Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Schiller, Hegel to Nietzsche. Facing the “end
of metaphysics” where human existence received its medially assigned designation
(Da-sein) he designed mid of the 20th century a “lens” to look in the future and called
it “another beginning” [27, p.176-179]. Is the new Cartesian trend Communico ergo
sum expressing an emotionally driven resistance of Generation Like while AI “takes
over” the communications and “dissolves” granularly our subject-oriented experi-
ences? Is digital Darwinism really disrupting our subject-centered illusion of “free
choice”? [28, p.199-210]
5 Schiller’s Aesthetical Lens as a 21st Century Tool
We close our short trip touching upon the milestones of AI aesthetics wherein the ethics
of choice is integral part of the aesthetics of beauty and elegance by extracting valuable
touchstones, framed by Schiller in the times of another social revolution, the French
one in 1789. Schiller’s aesthetics of beauty [29, p. 94, 99] confers a capacity of percep-
tion on the intellect (= AI in our case) and the will (= the ethics of choice) that should
“speak” directly to both. “Beauty offers no interference to the intellect or to the will.
Here all external help disappears and the pure logical form – the concept – speaks di-
rectly to the intellect, the pure moral form – law – directly to the will. It confers on
both merely the capacity.” Then comes the crucial conclusion: “The moral condition
can be developed only from the aesthetic, not from the physical, because the aesthetic
alone leads to the unlimited …”. Schiller’s idea is the cornerstone for our concept of AI
beauty and how its perception can bring us out of the uncanny valley. Following his
point of view, the transition from “passive perceiving” of beauty to active willing and
thinking occurs only through the “intermediate condition of aesthetic freedom of pas-
7
sions”. [30, p. 640-642] He delivers here a tool which is relevant to a 21st century con-
text. AI beauty “granularly dissolves” our emotionally driven resistance and introduces
the aptitude to conceive it “neutrally” and confers the ethical capacity to “assist” on a
rational level of logic and a moral of a “free choice”.
6 Conclusion
Concluding our journey, we have highlighted some historically given, yet “invisible
milestones” which refer to an intrinsic connection between the aesthetic perception of
beauty and elegance, and the ethics of free choice. On our way we have disclosed rele-
vant societal issues requiring alignment with the “granularly dissolved” knowledge of
Big Data, exponentially increasing during the last years . The highlighted questions will
remain open since we have not yet decided if we advance AI digital assistance within
a utilitarian context of profit-oriented corporate environment or we are determined to
shape AI aesthetic design “re-connecting” to Schiller’s moral conditions and Leibniz’
wisdom of perfection as immediate pleasure and lasting joy with the vision of a beauti-
ful mind as a “hybrid solution”.
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